Rise and decline of the Corporate Voice

7/2/07

This posting is an exercise in what could be called slogonology: approaching advertising slogans as historic artifacts. It’s a route to exploring the muscular growth and later retrenchments of the corporate voice.

As a case in point, consider the 121 years of ad slogans for Coke. This list, borrowed from Wikipedia and other sources, is more suggestive than complete:

• Drink Coca-Cola (1886)
• For headache and exhaustion drink Coca-Cola (1900)
• Delicious and refreshing (1904)
• Coca-Cola revives and sustains (1905)
• The great national temperance beverage (1906)
• Good til the last drop (1908)
• Whenever you see an arrow think of Coca-Cola (1909)
• It’s fun to be thirsty when you can get a Coca-Cola (1916)
• Three million a day (1917)
• Thirst knows no season (1922)
• Enjoy life (1923)
• Refresh yourself (1924)
• Six million a day (1925)
• It had to be good to get where it is (1926)
• Pure as sunlight (1927)
• Around the corner from anywhere (1927)
• Coca-Cola … pure drink of natural flavors (1928)
• The pause that refreshes (1929)
• Ice-cold sunshine (1932)
• The best friend thirst ever had (1938)
• Thirst asks nothing more (1938)
• Coca-Cola goes along (1939)
• The only thing like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola itself (1942)
• Where there’s Coke there’s hospitality (1948)
• Coca-Cola … along the highway to anywhere (1949)
• What you want is a Coke (1952)
• Coca-Cola … makes good things taste better (1956)
• Sign of good taste (1957)
• The cold, crisp taste of Coke (1958)
• Be really refreshed (1959)
• Things go better with Coke (1963)
• It’s the real thing (1969)
• Look up America (1975)
• Coke adds life (1976)
• Have a Coke and a smile (1979)
• Coke is it! (1982)
• America’s real choice (1985)
• Red white & you (for Coca-Cola Classic) (1986)
• Catch the Wave (for New Coke) (1986)
• You can’t beat the feeling (1987)
• Can’t beat the real thing (1989)
• Always Coca-Cola (1993)
• Enjoy (2000)
• Life tastes good (2001)
• Real (2003)
• Make it real (2005)
• The Coke side of life (2006)

What do these slogans suggest about the history of the corporate voice?

The Slogan as Private Message

The earliest slogans speak in the singular, to the singular, becoming ever more attentive to the reasons a single buyer will drink a Coke. The earliest reasons have a pharmaceutical ring: “For headache and exhaustion”; “Revives and sustains.” (The medicinal properties of cocaine, included in the formula until 1904, were part of the formula and part of the pitch.)

Soon enough the lone appetite is celebrated: “It’s fun to be thirsty”, “Refresh yourself” (1924), “Ice cold sunshine”, “Thirst asks for nothing more”. This first great era of Coke advertising nested in magazines and newspapers, designed for single readers.

The Slogan as Public Message

In the second era Coke celebrates its role as social super-glue. Heralded by slogans like “Three million a day” and “Six million a day”, the new era speaks confidently in the plural, to the plural, whether emphasizing Coke’s ubiquity (“Around the corner from anywhere”), its value as lubricant (“Where there’s Coke there’s hospitality”), or as social percolator (“Coke adds life,” “Have a Coke and a smile.”) The second era was so buoyant it gave birth to slogans that leave the name Coke out, most notably, “It’s the real thing.”

The media tell a parallel story: these ads have exploded beyond the boundaries of newspapers and magazines, now to become among the most common roadside distractions: sprouting from billboards and highway signs, pulsing in neon from windows of restaurants and gas stations, on bold circular red signs in tin, on the faces of coolers – and after the early 1950s, ever more widely seen on television.

The Ambient Slogan

The third era is simple. Its slogans celebrate earlier slogans more than they celebrate any distinctive role — private or social – of Coca-Cola. The third era is the era of the slogan-as-echo: “Always Coca-Cola,” “Enjoy,” “Life tastes good,” “Make it real,” or “The Coke side of life.”

None of these recent slogans really indicates a unique selling proposition, or for that matter, would suggest to anyone new to Coke, what Coke might be all about. These slogans are designed to be as ambient and familiar as Coca-Cola’s dashing white-on-red calligraphy, or the bodaciously suggestive curves of the constantly revived Coke bottle.

Ambient slogans are echolike and resonant. They also represent the exhaustion of fresh expression. We see the same in other domains of the corporate voice: for example, in Hollywood’s ever-expanding reliance on franchises and remakes.

The corporate voice, of course, represents the fading Third Voice. How soon will we see The Coca-Cola Company exploring the Fourth Voice as a new source of advertising?

– William Kuhns